Caribbean Days Festival in North Vancouver

A friend I met in grad school is from Barbados. When she learned that I was planning to go to Jamaica with Jean-Louis, she suggested I go to the Caribbean Festival in Vancouver. That was five years ago. We were interested but we just never got around to going. It's kind of like how we only went to the Greek festival this year.

Yesterday we finally went to the Caribbean Days Festival. It was held at Waterfront Park in North Vancouver. There was food, live music, vendors selling crafts and clothing, rides for kids and bouncy castles. The view of Vancouver was also spectacular. Unlike the Greek festival where there were lots of free kids activities, the Caribbean Festival was charging for everything. We put Tristan in the small bouncy castle so he could jump around a bit. He had a blast but it was $2 for only 3 minutes. There were only about 5 kids in there too and no one else around. Even the food was pricey. A chicken roti was $12 and a smoothie was $5. We ended up spending $28 and we weren't even full. In comparison, we spent maybe $12 at the Greek Festival and we were stuffed. It's not really fair to compare the two since the Greek Festival didn't make any money from their event. All profits went towards funding the Greek event, which I heard was billed at $150 000. Crazy. It was a huge success though.

We will most likely go back to the Greek Festival but probably not the Caribbean Festival. The food was good but too pricey at the Caribbean Festival and I didn't like that the kids activities were not complimentary. Jean-Louis thought the food wasn't good at all. The venue itself was too small and impractical. The walkway separating the food vendors from the crafts and entertainment was too narrow and crowded. Okay, I'm going to stop complaining. It was nice to finally experience it and the weather was beautiful. I even wore my Jamaican t-shirt for the occasion :)